The effects of the federal government's partial shutdown, now in its third week, continue to worsen, even as the effects of last year's 'blue wave' election continue to make things much better for Americans across the country. Among the stories covered on today's BradCast [audio link is posted below]...

• The shutdown is causing "a mess" for potentially tens of thousands of American families who live in properties subsidized by the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. They may soon face rent increases or eviction due to HUD's failure to renew thousands of contracts before and during the agency's closure;

• Vice President Mike Pence made the media rounds in advance of Trump's Tuesday night prime-time Oval Office remarks (which TV networks didn't allow for Obama), in hopes of drumming up support for the Administration's false claim there is a national security crisis on the border which may precipitate a Presidential declaration of a "national emergency". Pence offered a number of false claims in the bargain, which even some GOPers were scoffing at today;

• With Trump having boxed himself into this protracted shutdown mess, a "national emergency" declaration may be his only face-saving way out of it. It would likely result in Republicans allowing a vote in the Senate for reopening the government, even as the declaration would face court challenges over its legality and, essentially, do little more than steal tax-payer money from national defense as U.S. troops are tasked with building Trump's southern border wall;

• The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear two partisan gerrymandering cases this session (from Maryland and North Carolina), which may not be good news following the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy;

• But, in better news from SCOTUS today, the Court rejected a plea from Virginia Republicans to delay a lower-court mandated remapping of districts for its House of Delegates in advance of this November's off-year legislative elections in the state. Twelve of those districts were previously found by the lower court to be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders;

• Meanwhile, last year's midterm 'blue wave' is already yielding dividends for the nation. In Maine, the nation's dumbest now-thankfully-former Governor Paul LePage certified what he declared to be a "stolen election" for the U.S. House on his way out the door, and the state's new Democratic Governor Janet Mills signed legislation on her first day on the job that will finally give access to healthcare to some 70,000 Mainers under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Medicaid Expansion that had been blocked for some eight years by the former Republican Governor;

• And, in further good news following last year's midterms, Florida's Amendment 4, adopted by nearly 65 percent of voters in November, kicked in on Tuesday to allow as many as 1.4 million former felons the right to vote in a state that is notorious for its close elections. Despite claims by some Republicans that "implementing language" may need to be enacted, County Supervisors of Elections began allowing registrations under the new Amendment for most former felons who have served their time. The result could be a sea change for the state in 2020, not to mention for the rest of the nation where Florida's electoral votes are key to Presidential elections;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the first Green News Report of 2019, where last year's 'blue wave' is also being positively felt on the environmental front at both the state and federal level, even as Trump's shutdown is trashing national parks and blocking important scientific research...

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On today's BradCast: Desi and I are back after the holidays --- and to end the shutdown! You're welcome! There's a LOT of news to catch up on as Democrats officially settle in to their new U.S. House majority with the federal government remaining partially closed thanks to Donald Trump's new demand for $5 billion in tax-payer money (not Mexico's) to fund his southern border wall. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The federal shutdown is beginning to cause very real and negative effects across the country, particularly at our national parks and monuments and, if it goes on much longer, in food assistance to the poor. Oddly enough, National Park Service rangers are still deployed to one historic site in D.C. --- the one that happens to be inside the Old Post Office building....which is now the Trump International Hotel.

Meanwhile, Trump has announced plans for a prime-time speech to the nation on Tuesday night to address his pretend "National Security crisis on our Southern Border" and is requesting airtime for it from the national TV networks. However, while Trump is standing firm on his demand for some $5 billion to fund his border wall, (and Dems are standing equally firm in not giving it to him), his very own proposed budget plan for 2019 [PDF], as given to Congress last year, requested just $1.6 billion for the wall. (Seriously, open on the PDF and click on the section for the Dept. of Homeland Security, where it details the Admin's 2019 request: "Critical investments include $1.6 billion for construction of the border wall.") That's almost exactly what the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted to give him last year, which Trump agreed to...before criticism from Righwing media led him to increase his demand two weeks ago.

So, it's left to me, I guess, to explain how Democrats should give Trump exactly what he asked for in that proposal last year --- as written by Office of Management and Budget chief and now Trump's Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney --- in order to solve the very real shutdown crisis.

Also, among the many other stories covered on today's show:

• For the first time in her career as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, recuperating from cancer surgery, was not present for oral argument at SCOTUS on Monday.

• In better SCOTUS news, the Court rejected ExxonMobil's plea to save them from an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General into the oil giant's decades of apparent fraud regarding climate change.

• Over the weekend, newly-minted progressive Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for restoring the 70 percent income tax rate for the lucky few earning more than $10 million a year, in order to help fund a 'Green New Deal' to save the planet. Republicans, predictably, are both freaking out and lying about her proposal.

And, finally, we open up the phone lines to callers on all of the above and much more, including what listeners hope to see Democrats take on as their top priorities in the new Congress...

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It has been an exhausting year. Both Desi and I are desperate for a much-needed mental and physical health break (and to say hello to our families, if we can remember their names) before whatever fresh/continuing hell awaits in the new year. So, I just wanted to post a quick note of thanks to those of you who have helped support our efforts over this past difficult year (and the 15 or so before them!) here at The BRAD BLOG!...

Every great Reality TV show needs a dramatic and gripping season finale. So too, apparently, does does every horrible Reality TV Presidency! [Audio link is posted below]

Today is our last new BradCast before Christmas (Angie Coiro will be filling in for us, along with a few "evergreens" over the next week or two), but, as has become clear today, Trump! The Presidency! has certainly delivered in the shocking and suspenseful season finale department! Including...

TWISTS AND TURNS! Acting AG Matthew Whitaker did not, as misreported earlier today, get approval from a DoJ ethics review to oversee Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe. In fact, the ethics review determined he should recuse himself. But, apparently, he plans to ignore that finding;

SURPRISES! Trump defies his military advisers, not to mention stuns and infuriates members of Congress on both sides of the aisle along with experts in the region, by declaring "victory" on Twitter over ISIS and that he plans to now pull U.S. troops out of Syria! But when? Nobody seems to know. Is Afghanistan next? (Apparently so!);

MAIN CHARACTERS 'KILLED OFF'! Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis, the last of Trump's "My Generals", and none too happy about the Syria decision, submits his surprise resignation, charging the President is anything but "clear-eyed" about the need for U.S. alliances and the threats faced from its adversaries;

SUSPENSE! Will Trump shut down the federal government over Christmas? Last week he said he would. Earlier this week he indicated he wouldn't. But, today, it looks like he will! And all over $5 billion in funding for a southern border wall (now "steel slats") he promised that Mexico, not tax-payers, would be paying for;

CHRISTMAS VILLAINY! Trump's USDA, in defiance of Congress's newly passed farm bill, announces they will now make it more difficult for the poor to receive food stamps. That'll show 'em!;

NUCLEAR CLIFF-HANGER! North Korea bluntly declares that "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" actually means what it sounds like, and what those of us in the reality-based world (as opposed to the Reality TV world) already knew. They will not denuclearize unless the U.S. removes its own troops and nuclear weapons at the same time. Will Trump return to his threats for "fire and fury like the world has never seen"?! Stay tuned for the thrilling 2019 season!

Also today: The DNC announces its planned schedule for a dozen 2020 Presidential primary debates beginning in 2019, even though we're not yet even done with the 2018 election around here yet!

As we await the scheduled January 11th evidentiary hearing over the GOP's 2018 Absentee Ballot Election Fraud Scandal that has prevented Republican Mark Harris' 905-vote U.S. House "victory" over Democrat Dan McCready from being certified in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, the state Board of Election's stunning 279-page 2016 investigative report [PDF] on apparent absentee ballot fraud by McCrae Dowless, the same GOP contractor hired in 2018 by Harris, is released. And it includes some jaw-dropping evidence begging the question: How can it be that Dowless not already prosecuted after 2016, but allowed instead to carry out the same unlawful election fraud scams in 2018?!

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with a number of climate crisis Christmas gifts from states around the country and hardly any lumps of coal at all!...

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On today's BradCast: The Trump Presidency feels as if it is now in free-fall. Is it? [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today, a federal judge in Washington D.C. (the same judge involved in Tuesday's dramatic sentencing hearing of Donald Trump's disgraced former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn) declared the Trump Administration's new policy of rejecting asylum claims made on the basis of domestic abuse and gang violence to be a violation of the law. We discussed then Attorney General Jeff Sessions' cruel new policy guidance on this matter after it was announced back in June with Karen Musalo, a longtime immigration rights attorney who told us, at the time, that the Admin's new policy was in violation of the law. Turns out she was right, according to today's federal court ruling, which is just the latest legal and/or political blow to Donald Trump's efforts to harden immigration policy in the U.S.

His failed policies on that and much more --- all eagerly supported by his Republican Party over the past two years --- resulted in last month's midterm elections "blue wave", when Democrats picked up an historic net gain of at least 40 seats in the U.S. House to take majority control in January. But the GOP losses were also felt at the state level around the country, including in formerly "deep red" Kansas, where voters elected a Democratic Governor and rejected a number of Republican state lawmakers. This week, things are getting worse for Kansas Republicans as a new wave of party defectors has resulted, so far (more may be on the way), in three elected Republicans in the state legislature (all women, by the way) flipping their allegiance to the Democratic Party in advance of next month's new legislative session.

Given the revelations and dramatic sentencing hearings related to various state and federal investigations into the unprecedented corruption of Donald Trump, his campaign, his businesses, his family and his Administration over the past week, things are likely to get much worse for Republicans before getting better any time soon.

On that matter and more, we're joined today by HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo to discuss what is now beginning to feel like a Presidency that is falling apart by the day, if not the hour, particularly following Tuesday's dramatic sentencing hearing of Flynn and last week's sentencing of Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, who implicated the President as "directing" a felony hush-money payoff conspiracy carried out just before the 2016 election, in clear violation of campaign finance laws.

All of that, as Trump and his associates and family are now facing criminal investigations and/or prosecutions at both the pardon-proofed state level and in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of the Trump Campaign's alleged coordination with Russia and his own obstruction of justice. As usual, Parton offers her keen observations as the investigations continue to quickly close in on the President, describing all of this as "the most serious political crisis we have ever had," outside of wars, while adding the understated obvious: "It's not good to have a criminal and a con man in the White House."

We discuss, among many other things, Tuesday's astonishing Flynn hearing which went off the rails, and the judge's curious references to "treason"; whether or not there is a "grand conspiracy" at the heart of the Russia matter resulting in the seemingly inexplicable number of lies being told by Trump and his associates about their various contacts with Russians; whether Trump will be able to withstand the ever-increasing pressure of the probes; how his wingnut fans and media supporters are (often hilariously) still trying to justify it all as a partisan "hoax"; and what Democrats will (or, at least, should) do in response once they take over the House majority next month...

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Today was the first day that it really began to feel like things are finally falling completely apart for Donald Trump and his administration. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the mountain of stories covered on today's BradCast amid an astonishing day of news on several fronts...

• The New York state Attorney General entered an agreement with the Trump Foundation to permanently shut down the supposed charitable organization. Her investigation and prosecution of alleged fraud, campaign violations and self-dealing via the organization by Trump, his three adult children and his 2016 campaign will continue, despite the Foundation's dissolution;

• The Trump Administration blinked on Tuesday, at least a bit, following Trump's previous televised threats to shut down the federal government this Friday over funding for his border wall with Mexico (which, we were repeatedly told during the campaign, they, not tax-payers, would pay for.) Last week, Trump said on camera he would be "proud" to shut down the federal government before Christmas if Democrats didn't agree to $5 billion for wall funding in a budget agreement that must pass by this Friday. Today, Trump's Press Secretary suggested they'd find the money elsewhere, even as Congress remained at a standstill with Republicans not having enough votes to pass a bill that meets Trump's demands;

• At the same time, in a federal court room in D.C., Trump's disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators last year, had been expected to walk away from his sentencing hearing a free man today following his cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team. They had requested no jail time for Flynn after his help in several known and unknown probes. But, thanks to Flynn's attorneys falsely suggesting in a sentencing memorandum last week that he had been duped, tricked and entrapped by FBI investigators into lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, the sentencing was mercifully postponed until March. In a remarkable colloquy with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Ronald Reagan appointee, Flynn quickly backed off his attorneys claims. In blistering remarks from the bench, Sullivan railed that he could not "hide my disgust, my disdain" for Flynn's behavior, and upbraided the former top Trump official and retired Lt. General for having "arguably sold out your country". A reportedly shaken Flynn then asked for his sentencing to be delayed, so that the could further cooperate with the Special Counsel in hopes of being credited to avoid jail time. All of that, after Trump had wished Flynn "good luck" via Twitter prior to today's hearing;

• In Arizona, the loser of November's U.S. Senate contest, Republican Rep. Martha McSally, was appointed by the state's GOP Governor to take the seat of Sen. Jon Kyle, who had temporarily replaced the late Sen. John McCain earlier this year. McSally narrowly lost her Senate bid in November to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who she had described as a "traitor" during the campaign. McSally also tried to make amends with McCain's family after insulting the ailing Senator before his death;

• In the North Carolina GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal, state Republicans reversed their position for a second time regarding the certification of Republican Mark Harris. State Republican leaders demanded that he be certified in the state's 9th Congressional District House race, despite an ongoing fraud investigation. The current results show that Harris defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes in November. The State Board of Elections, however, has refused to certify the race due to the allegations of absentee ballot fraud and has postponed it's planned evidentiary hearing from December 21 to January 11, thanks to what the Board describes as delayed document production by subpoenaed parties. Harris has now admitted that he hired the GOP contractor accused of altering or withholding perhaps thousands of absentee ballots in the race;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with a surprising amount of actually encouraging news for a change.

Yes, it really is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

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It's been a very busy news weekend (as usual these days), so we try to catch up with at least some of it, along with calls from listeners on today's BradCast. But, more importantly, we're already busy trying to save the next election from disaster, thanks to a move by folks on the right and left to make election results virtually impossible to be overseen and verified. [Audio link to today's show is posted below.]

States and counties all across the country are finally beginning to move to new "upgraded" voting systems. In many cases, however --- in both Republican and Democratic-leaning jurisdictions alike --- officials are now disastrously preparing to move to touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) which are even less verifiable, in many cases, than systems currently in use!

In Georgia, a commission impaneled by Republican Brian Kemp, champion vote suppressor as former Sec. of State and now Governor-elect, is deciding whether to move from the state's 100% unverifiable Diebold touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines to similarly 100% unverifiable touchscreen BMDs made by ES&S before the next election. Here in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest voting jurisdiction, the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk has already announced plans to move to such an unverifiable system before the 2020 Presidential election, while (incorrectly) claiming that it produces a "verifiable paper ballot". BMD systems do not.

Proponents argue that touchscreen BMDs, which print out a computer-marked and barcoded "paper ballot" summary card of the voters vote, produce a "verifiable" record of the cast ballot. But, as Professor RICHARD DEMILLO of Georgia Tech and Verified Voting explains today, based on his recently published study, many voters (about half) do not bother to verify their computer-printed ballot summary cards before casting them to be tallied by a separate computer scanner. Of those who do, the study finds, they only glance at them for an average of 3.9 seconds before depositing them into the scanner (and that was during an election with some 18 races on the ballot!)

"Half of them don't look at the ballots at all," DeMillo tells me. "Those that do, give it by and large a cursory reading that wouldn't allow them to check it in any meaningful way."

Moreover, DeMillo's study finds, based on observation and testing at polling places earlier this year, most voters are unable to accurately verify --- just seconds after leaving the polling place --- whether an unvoted list of the races they just voted in accurately represents the races on the ballot they just cast! DeMillo --- a longtime computer security expert who formerly served as Hewlett-Packard's chief technology officer --- argues, the only way to ensure that ballots actually reflect the will of the voter is to use HAND-MARKED paper ballots, whether they are counted by hand or optical-scan systems.

"These are all problems we've created for ourselves" with some help from the private voting system vendors, he argues. "The only reason we're having this discussion is that someone decided that having an expensive pen to mark a ballot is more important than the transparency of the election process itself. As soon as you get rid of the Ballot Marking Devices, the universe goes back to normal, mathematics works out, we can conduct auditable elections in a much more verifiable way."

When I ask this longtime computer technologist and cryptography expert the best, most verifiable way to cast ballots, he answes directly: "Hand-marked paper ballots." His answer echoes that of longtime Livermore National Lab computer scientist and voting systems expert Dr. David Jefferson, who argued the same point during my interview with him in October.

Also today: What the federal court's questionable ruling in Texas on Friday finding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) unconstitutional, does (and doesn't) mean for all of us in 2019. The federal HealthCare.gov exchange's open enrollment period for 2019 ended over the weekend, but several states which run their own Obamacare markets, such as CA, CT, D.C., NY, MA, MN and RI, continue open enrollment through January.

Then, a thought or two from our own Desi Doyen on the long-overdue weekend announcement of the resignation of Trump's corrupt Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke.

And, finally today, we open the phones to callers with thoughts on, among other things, whether voting in the U.S. should (or shouldn't be) be compulsory and whether voting is a "right" or "privilege". Don't miss that lively debate with callers and much more on today's BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast: Lock him up! Plus a whole bunch of November 6 midterm fallout, follow-up and fraud. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Yes, despite his many desperate and ever-shifting attempts to explain (lie) his way out of it, all evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump quite clearly committed a major, indictable, campaign finance felony in his hush-money payoffs before the 2016 election to women with whom he had had sexual affairs. We're joined today by longtime campaign finance expert CRAIG HOLMAN of Public Citizen for a very sober, clear, point-by-point explanation of Trump's apparent crime in this matter and what can (or, at least should) be done about it.

Holman methodically debunks each of Trump's various claims --- offered via both Fox "News" and on Twitter --- in the wake of the criminal sentencing in federal court on Wednesday, of his longtime personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen. Cohen pleaded guilty for, among other things, facilitating the illicit, covert payoff scheme "directed" by Trump to cover up the trysts so they wouldn't adversely effect his 2016 election chances. Holman elaborates on how any other elected federal official would "absolutely" be indicted for the exact same unlawful scheme.

"Every other government official is subject to the laws of the nation, just like you and I. And we have seen many members of Congress, for instance, and other Executive Branch officials face indictment, prosecution and even imprisonment for this type of felony behavior," he tells me.

The only thing preventing similar accountability for Trump, Holman argues, is the controversial opinion from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which states that a sitting President may not be indicted on criminal charges. But, Holman says, citing recent arguments from Richard Nixon's former counsel John Dean, that's precisely what the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment was already designed to handle.

"The entire rationale behind [the OLC opinion] it is that indicting a President would incapacitate the Executive Branch, and therefore you just can't indict a sitting President," he says. But "we've got the 25th Amendment in the Constitution, and that sets up an entire transition period if the President becomes incapacitated. So there is no incapacitation. We know the transition. So the president should be subject to indictment."

Beyond the protection of the OLC opinion, Holman notes one very narrow potential argument that Trump might otherwise be able to use to avoid try and avoid legal accountability. But, he concludes, "The evidence is overwhelming that our President committed a felony."

In other news today, Wisconsin's rejected Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping host of bills --- adopted with lightning speed by the gerrymandered GOP state legislature in an extraordinary lame duck session --- designed to undermine the Executive powers of incoming Democratic Governor-elect Tony Evers, and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, as well as the state's voters. At least one lawsuit in response has already been announced to challenge the new provision that restricts Early Voting in the state. A similar provision was ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts in 2016 (as we discussed recently with the plaintiff in that case.)

In Michigan, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, also soon to be replaced by a Democrat, signed several bills on Friday that similarly undermine voters.

In North Carolina -- where Republicans invented these very types of unprecedented lame duck power grabs back in 2016 --- the GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal that has, so far, prevented the certification of Republican Mark Harris' reported 905-vote "victory" over Democrat Dan McCready in the state's 9th Congressional District, may be spreading to a completely different U.S. House District. In Columbus County, in the state's 7th CD, there was reportedly an even larger percentage of mysteriously unreturned absentee ballots from Democratic voters than that which originally sparked the 9th CD's ongoing election fraud probe. In Columbus, a Republican candidate for Sheriff is said to have unseated the Democrat Sheriff by by just 37 votes after hiring the same GOP contractor at the center of the NC9 absentee ballot fraud allegations. As we've been reporting, evidence revealed during the ongoing investigation in NC9 will, almost certainly at this point, result in a new U.S. House election there.

Finally today, in Maine, incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin saw his Constitutional challenge to the state's new Ranked Choice Voting system rejected by a Trump-appointed federal judge on Thursday. On Friday, he called off the ongoing hand-count he had requested in his 2nd Congressional District race. Poliquin, after winning the most votes in the first computer tally by more than 2,200 votes, failed to win a majority. In the next round of counting, after voters' second place choices were redistributed to other candidates according to the computerized RCV algorithm now used to tally ballots in the state, Democrat Jared Golden was declared the winner of the November 6th contest. The complicated RCV hand-count began last week and, until ended by Poliquin today, was otherwise expected to continue for several more weeks. The outgoing Republicans says he is still mulling an appeal to the federal court ruling.

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Among the many messes covered on today's BradCast [Audio link to full show is posted below]...

• Trump can't seem to find anyone who wants to be his new Chief of Staff. So, his son-in-law Jared Kushner now appears to be in the running;

• Trump finally responded (on Fox "News", naturally) to Wednesday's news that his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen received a three year prison sentence after cooperating with federal investigators and pleading guilty to a number of felonies. The charges include an illegal 2016 hush-money payout scheme to women said to have had sexual affairs with Trump, which Cohen and the prosecutors describe as having been "directed" by Trump in violation of campaign finance laws. Trump now says it wasn't unlawful, but if it was, it was only a civil, not criminal violation --- and that he didn't do it in any case, but if he did, it was all Cohen's fault --- and that Cohen only pleaded guilty to it as a favor to federal prosecutors in order to "embarrass" Trump. Or something. Got it?;

• Meanwhile, a federal government shutdown next week before Christmas is looking increasingly likely. After Trump's televised Oval Office tantrum with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer earlier this week over funding for his Border Wall, it's become apparent that Republicans in Congress currently have no plan to avoid a shutdown next week after Trump declared during the meeting that he would happily take the blame for such a shutdown. Even in the House, where Republicans still hold a large majority until January, they seem unable to pass a version of a spending bill that includes funding for the wall that Trump repeatedly promised Mexico would pay for;

• In Kentucky, taking a page from Trump, Tea Party Republican Governor Matt Bevin released a bizarre video on Twitter Wednesday night, attacking the Louisville Courier-Journal for their new partnership with independent, non-profit investigative reporting outlet ProPublica. Bevin charges ProPublica is a "far-left" organization secretly funded by "George 'I Hate America' Soros" and, therefore, everyone should "disregard" the reporting from the Courier-Journal. ProPublica responded to the charges, and suggests a recent damning exposé by the paper finding Bevin hired an old friend for a top IT job in the state and gave him a $215,000 raise after less than a year, is just one of the reasons Bevin may be hoping Kentuckians stop reading the paper;

• In North Carolina, the mess created by the GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal in the state's 9th Congressional District continues. Republican lawmakers, on Wednesday, passed legislation that would allow the State Board of Elections to call not just a new general election for the U.S. House in NC9, but for a new primary as well, following evidence of absentee fraud in both elections this year by a GOP contractor hired by Mark Harris, the Republican candidate. Harris is said to have defeated incumbent Congressman Robert Pittenger by just over 800 votes in the May GOP primary and his Democratic opponent Dan McCready by just over 900 votes in the November midterm. State Republicans seem to now be conceding that both races were tainted with fraud by their candidate and will now require a do-over;

• In Michigan, GOP lawmakers are scrambling to pass a measure in the lame duck session that would make it much harder for voters to place statewide initiatives on the ballot. That's just one of several ongoing efforts by Republicans in the state to strip power from voters and the Executive Branch before Democrats can be sworn in as Governor, Attorney General and Secretary of State next month.

• And finally, in The Arctic....well, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report to detail that frightening and worsening mess, along with several others...

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On today's BradCast: Trump appears now to be in very big trouble. So do Republicans in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District. But President Obama's Affordable Care Act soldiers on, even as signups are down as the open enrollment period for 2019 on the federal HealthCare.gov exchange quietly nears its close on Saturday, December 15th.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and 'fixer' Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and some $2 million in fines after cooperating with federal prosecutors following guilty pleas to several felonies in August. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team noted that Cohen has been helpful in their probe of Trump's still-unexplained relationship with Russia, but it was the charges brought by federal prosecutors against Cohen in New York's Southern District related to hush-money payoffs to women with whom Trump was said to have had sexual affairs that most immediately appears to cook Trump's goose.

Both Cohen and the federal government now allege that Trump, in the waning days of the 2016 campaign, "directed" a conspiracy to pay off the women in order to buy their silence in an illicit scheme to "influence the election". Those payoffs of $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels and $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal (via National Enquirer publisher AMI) are considered illegal campaign contributions.

Also on Wednesday, prosecutors announced a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, run by longtime Trump pal David Pecker, in exchange for their cooperation in the case. As discussed on today's show, Trump now appears to be in very VERY big trouble, at this point. If the man who helped make the payoffs at Trump's "direction" --- who had also cooperated with investigators --- received three years in prison for his crimes, imagine what may happen to the man who actually directed the conspiracy.

While there are still a number of potential escape hatches such as the Presidential pardon power for Trump, his associates, his family members and his businesses, a new interview with incoming New York state Attorney General-elect Letitia James suggests she has that base covered as well. James says she intends to "use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well" at the state level, including "anyone" in his circle who may have violated state law. Trump's businesses and campaign are based in New York. James tells NBC she intends to bring state charges in an attempt to ensure Trump, his associates, his family and his various organizations are unable to evade accountability with Presidential pardons at the federal level.

In North Carolina, meanwhile, fresh revelations continue to emerge regarding the 9th Congressional District election which is at the center of an ongoing GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal. New details in that matter today include the state Republican Party's admission that a new election will most likely be needed, following news this week that Early Voting results in Bladen County were reportedly leaked, illegally, in advance of the November 6th election.

Moreover, a new affidavit from a Republican now charges that McCrae Dowless, the GOP contractor hired by Republican Mark Harris to run his absentee ballot campaign in Bladen, where the fraud scheme appears centered, told him that he (unlawfully) had as many as 800 absentee ballots in his possession prior to the election. What came of those ballots we don't yet know, but Harris is said to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes in the 9th District last month. At this point, I see no way that a new election in the district can be avoided, other than simply naming McCready the winner.

Also today, we're joined by ALICE OLLSTEIN, formerly of Talking Points Memo, now a congressional reporter at Politico, to discuss the nearly 10 percent drop off in signups this year for the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), as the federal open enrollment period comes to a close this weekend. "It's not high prices that are deterring people," Ollstein argues, citing a key piece of data to back that up, before explaining the several different reasons why signups are down this year so far, and how that may affect the future stability of the federal exchanges.

With Democrats set to take the majority in the U.S. House in January, Ollstein also details their dilemma in how to best defend against a federal lawsuit brought by several Republican-controlled states (and now supported by the Trump Administration) hoping to kill the landmark ACA and its vital protections for those with preexisting conditions...

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On today's BradCast: A preview of the unimaginably worse dysfunction that awaits us all after Democrats take over the U.S. House majority in January and Donald Trump becomes even worse and more dishonest at his job? [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, some quick news headlines, including Time Magazine's announcement that several journalists, killed or imprisoned, are "Person of the Year" for 2018, and a life sentence plus 419 years recommended by the jury for the neo-Nazi who murdered activist Heather Heyer by plowing a car into counter-protesters during the August 2017 "United the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Also, the Washington Post Fact Checkers have been forced to create a new category to describe Donald Trump's dozens of endlessly repeated lies, such as his claims that Mexico would pay for his border wall (he's demanding U.S. tax-payers do so instead) and that his tax cuts were the largest in U.S. history (they weren't. They were the 8th largest.) The new category will be called "Bottomless Pinocchio" and will apply to lies that repeated more than 20 times after they've long been debunked by the fact-checkers as a falsehood. To date, Trump is the only politician to merit such a rating. At least 14 of his most frequently repeated lies have already earned the dubious new distinction.

Then, Trump's bizarre on-camera pageant in the Oval Office today with presumptive, soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. During a media avail before what was to be a meeting regarding the impending federal budget deadline, the three bickered about Trump's threat to shut down the U.S. Government if a budget deal fails to include billions for his southern border wall. "If we don't get what we want," Trump threatened the Democrats during the lengthy and bizarre televised negotiation, "I will shut down the government."

Pelosi and Schumer tried to convince the President to accept one of two bi-partisan deals they say could be immediately passed by both the House and Senate. But Trump, the great deal-maker, failed to budge --- so far. Trump's threat to shutdown the U.S. Government despite the costs to Americans and the economy, comes even while Republicans still control both chambers of Congress. Things are likely to get much uglier once Dems take over the House with their (at least) 40-seat majority on January 3.

Speaking of which, we've got a few more new details today on the GOP election fraud scandal in North Carolina's still-uncertified 9th Congressional District race. Republican Mark Harris is said to have won the election in November by just 905 votes over Democrat Dan McCready. But evidence of absentee ballot fraud by a GOP contractor hired by Harris (in both the general election and Republican primary) has delayed certification of the race by the State Board of Elections. They will decide whether to order a new election or declare one of the two candidates the winner. The Board had planned to review evidence from the ongoing investigation by December 21, but has now told a state court they they may need more time, given that the Harris Campaign has been slow in responding to documents subpoenaed by the Board.

Also, new evidence this week reveals that election workers in Bladen County (one of two NC counties at the center of the probe), illegally tabulated early vote results and leaked them to non-election officials (the Harris campaign?) several days prior to the close of polls on November 6th.

Meanwhile, election officials in Florida have now revealed that more than 6,600 vote-by-mail absentee ballots sent and post-marked by Election Day went uncounted in the Sunshine State's midterm election. Those numbers don't yet include ballots from Palm Beach County, a Democratic stronghold. The untabulated ballots might have effected a number of close races in FL, including those tallied in statewide "recounts" for U.S. Senate, Governor and Agricultural Commissioner. While state law allows ballots post-marked by Election Day from overseas military votes to be included in the tally if they are received up to ten days after the election, all other "late" ballots are ignored.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with news from COP24, the U.N. climate conference in Poland, where the U.S. has joined Russia and Saudi Arabia in an "Axis of Oil" and is, literally, being laughed at for pushing coal while youth protesters demand fossil fuels be kept in the ground. Back home, the Trump Administration is now planning to reclassify high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state (and other facilities) in order to avoid billions of dollars in clean-up at the nation's most polluted former nuclear weapons site...

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On today's BradCast: The boondoggles continue --- from the Pentagon to the U.S. House and American elections --- as we can't look ahead to the new year without the continuing unresolved muck from this year. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

When Democrats take the majority in the new Congress after the first of the year, one of their first orders of business will be determining who actually is allowed to be seated following the November 2018 midterm elections. There could be as many as three (and possibly more) seats challenged in the 116th Congress, thanks to the burgeoning GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal in North Carolina, an admission by a newly-elected Florida Republican that he "may have" violated federal campaign finance laws, and a lengthy hand-count process in Maine's first-ever Ranked Choice Voting election for a U.S. House seat.

In NC's 9th Congressional District, Mark Harris --- the GOP candidate whose uncertified 905-vote "victory" is now being probed by state and federal officials after the emergence of evidence of absentee ballot fraud by a GOP contractor Harris hired in both the primary and general elections --- has said he'd agree to a new election, but only if evidence surfaces that the fraud in question would have changed the final results. That's a much higher bar than called for by state law, which allows the State Board of Election to take any necessary actions to "assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption."

In FL, Ross Spano, the Republican who is said to have won the race in the state's 15th Congressional District, now admits he received nearly $200,000 in personal loans for his campaign from two friends, in violation of the $2,700 per person federal contribution limit. One of those friends, despite having no official government role, is today reported to be helping to select Spano's Congressional hires. In both the NC and FL cases, it's not just Democrats crying foul. Tthe Republicans who were defeated in the primaries by Harris and Spano are also joining the public outcries.

In ME, a "recount" request by ousted Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin in the 2nd Congressional District could result in a vacant seat for a while, as a hand-count of the complicated RCV counting process --- initially carried out after the election by a computer algorithm --- is a lengthy and onerous one that could stretch beyond January 3, when the new Congress is sworn in.

In non-election related news today, Donald Trump will reportedly call for an unprecedented $750 billion budget next year for the Pentagon after his previous increases to military spending. That, despite his description of Defense Department spending last week as "crazy" and previous vows to cut DoD's budget by 5 percent. The Administration's proposal for $750 billion is reported to be a "negotiating tactic" to ensure the $733 billion requested by the Pentagon, which is a far cry from the $700 billion Trump had called for previously and a substantial bump from the "crazy" $716 billion allocated for the current fiscal year.

We're joined today by investigative journalist DAVE LINDORFF to discuss the decades-long "accounting fraud" being carried out by the Pentagon, as detailed in his new exclusive exposé for The Nation. Citing whistleblowers, Inspector General's reports and a recent admission by the private accounting firm Ernst & Young that the Pentagon's books were so poorly documented that they simply cannot be audited, Lindorff explains how the DoD continues to seek --- and receive --- more tax-payer dollars year-after-year, even without needing or spending all they received in previous years. Rather than returning unpsent funds to the federal Treasury, DoD accounting gimmicks ("nippering" and "plugs") ensure endlessly increasing budgets and payments to Defense Contractors. The unchecked spending --- which amounts to trillions of dollars --- also helps to ensures that services Americans may actually need and want --- like healthcare, education and maintenance for infrastructure --- continue to be on the chopping block every fiscal year, even as Defense spending now accounts for 54 cents out of every federal tax-payer dollar collected.

"What the Pentagon does is they ask for more money than they need. They don't spend it all, and then they tuck away what isn't spent in ways that it won't be found --- violating the Constitution, by the way --- then that unspent money becomes a slush fund that's available to use however they want," Lindorff tells me.

"They've known about this stonewalling by the Pentagon for 26 years, which includes a lot of Democratic Congresses. Nobody has ever called them to the carpet on this," he charges. Despite Inspector General reports detailing the gimmicks and unaccounted for budget holes, "Nobody has been prosecuted for this. Nobody has been fired for this....If it's signed off on by the proper authority in the chain of command then it's 'supported' whether or not there's evidentiary material to back it."

Lindorff also argues that, with one recent exception, Democrats --- including progressives from Bernie Sanders to Beto O'Rourke --- have been largely silent on what he describes as a massive account fraud.

Finally today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who will chair the U.S. House Intelligence Committee after Dems take over Congress next year, argued over the weekend that new filings from federal prosecutors on Friday suggest "There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him" and "that he may be the first President in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time." Schiff was referencing, among other things, details from a sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors in New York on Friday charging that Trump "directed" a criminal conspiracy with his former attorney Michael Cohen to pay hush money to two women with whom Trump had affairs, in order to effect election results in violation of federal campaign finance laws...

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No, Iraq hasn't (yet) announced plans to invade North Carolina to help spread democracy. But, on today's BradCast, it's starting to look like it might not be a bad idea. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Just before air today, Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate in NC's 9th Congressional District U.S. House race tainted by evidence of GOP absentee ballot election fraud, withdrew his concession offered last month. McCready charges that Republican Mark Harris "bankrolled criminal activity" in the district in the hiring of contractor McCrae Dowless who appears to have gamed absentee ballots in Bladen and perhaps Robeson Counties, resulting in the 905-vote margin by which Harris had previously been thought to have won.

At the same time, NC-9's incumbent Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger, who Harris reportedly defeated in the primary last May, tells Washington Post that his concerns about fraud during that race --- when he lost to Harris by just 828 votes (more than half of them absentee ballots from Bladen) --- were shared with both state and national GOP officials at the time. Nonetheless, despite years-long claims of concern about fraud leading to passage of often unconstitutional GOP laws that restrict the ability of many Democratic-leaning voters to cast ballots, Republicans took no action after the primary. In fact, similar concerns about absentee ballot fraud by the same contractor surfaced after the 2016 election in the state as well.

The Charlotte Observer has now called for the 2018 election in NC-9 to be started over, from scratch, beginning with the primary. "Evidence demands it," their editorial board opined this week. We've got a whole bunch of late-breaking news related to the burgeoning NC-9 election fraud scandal today (along with my completely irresponsible prediction about how this entire thing ends).

Also, in related news, a newly emerging election fraud scandal in New York, where Republican and Independence Party leaders have now been charged with forging signatures on nominating petitions in order to boost chances for GOP candidates. (If that sounds familiar, it's because Republicans, apparently --- including very high-profile ones --- do that quite a bit.)

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin and Michigan this week continued their efforts to undermine the will of the midterm voters in the wake of disastrous performances in the November elections. In Wisconsin, where the GOP-gerrymandered legislature on Wednesday adopted unprecedented measures during an extraordinary lame duck session to remove power from the Governor, the Attorney General and voters in advance of Democratic Governor-elect Tony Evers and AG-elect Josh Kaul taking office next month, state lawmakers also confirmed 82 appointees of outgoing Republican Governor Scott Walker to state positions in one single day. Several of the positions had reportedly been vacant for as long as a year, and more than 30 of the new appointees have had no public hearing whatsoever in the state Senate. That power grab is particularly hypocritical for Walker, who warned his Democratic predecessor in 2010 to avoid all new appointments in the final two months of his term.

In Michigan, GOP lawmakers have proven similarly disdainful of voters during the lame duck session. Earlier this year, they adopted two voter-initiated ballot measures concerning increases to the state's minimum wage and paid sick leave for workers in order to prevent the proposals from appearing on the November ballot. But, this week, during the lame duck period before Democrat Gretchen Whitmer can be sworn in, Republican lawmakers gutted the measures they had just adopted in September. They would not have been able to do that had they been voted on by voters. The controversial --- and perhaps unconstitutional --- effort was given the green light by outgoing Republican AG Bill Schuette, who lost his bid for Governor in November to Whitmer.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with a bunch of very bad news on global carbon emissions and climate change, but a bit of encouraging news from several major companies in response to it...

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Given many of the stories covered on today's BradCast, it's beginning to feel more and more each day like the GOP is a party in its death throes. Of course, rumors of that death have been greatly exaggerated in the past. [Audio link to show follows below]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• The stock market was closed today in observance of a national day of mourning declared for President George H.W. Bush, whose funeral ceremony was held on Wednesday at the National Cathedral in D.C. The market closures may prove to have been a good thing, given that the Dow plummeted some 800 points on Tuesday after it became clear that Donald Trump and his Administration had lied over the weekend regarding a deal with China to avoid more tariffs on Chinese imports. During a Twitter rant that helped send the markets plunging, Trump appeared to reveal once again that he has no idea what tariffs actually are. He seems to believe they involve foreign countries paying money to the U.S., rather than an actual tax on American consumers. Is it conceivable that he really does not understand this by now? Or is he just continuing to play his supporters for chumps? We discuss;

• In Georgia's runoff election for Secretary of State on Tuesday, Republican Brad Raffensperger has declared himself the winner over Democrat John Barrow, in a race that will have serious repercussions for the 2020 Presidential election in the trending-"blue" southern state, where voter suppression and 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems created havoc in the 2018 Gubernatorial race said to have been won by GOP Sec. of State Brian Kemp. Raffensperger has called for new 100% touchscreen systems that create unverifiable computer-marked/barcoded ballot summary cards. Barrow, who is waiting for late absentee ballots to actually be tallied, has called for the only system of voting that is actually verifiable by the public after an election: hand-marked paper ballots.

  At the same time, the state's largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, has finally noticed the wildly anomalous undervote rate from the November 6th general election in the Lt. Governor's race, as only seen in the unverifiable touchscreen results, not on the vote-by-mail paper absentee ballots. Last week, we discussed these concerns with plaintiff Marilyn Marks of the non-partisan Coalition for Good Governance. Two weeks ago, Marks filed an election lawsuit contesting the results of the Lt. Governor's race. She and other plaintiffs are seeking a first-of-its-kind post-election forensic audit of the state's voting systems in light of the seemingly inexplicable undervote numbers;

• But there was some good news from Tuesday's runoffs as well. In Little Rock, Arkansas, where, six decades after angry white mobs protested the integration of nine black students at the Little Rock Central High School in 1957, the town will now have its very first elected African-American mayor!;

• In North Carolina, new details continue to emerge from the intensifying GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal which has prevented the certification of Republican Mark Harris' purported 905-vote "win" over Democrat Dan McCready in the 9th District U.S. House race. A second woman has now come forward to allege that she was paid to unlawfully collect absentee ballots by McCrae Dowless, a former felon contracted by Harris in Bladen Country and, as discussed today, by the Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVicker. The GOP Sheriff has deleted his campaign webpage on Facebook and refuses to comment after he was found to have paid thousands of dollars to Dowless along with Harris.

  A top Democrat in the U.S. House has now suggested that "Republican operatives stole" the House seat and cites the silence from the Trump Administration about it. "LOCK THEM UP," quipped new House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Tuesday. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) has now called for a new election and, on Wednesday, he was joined in that call by the editorial board of The Charlotte Observer, the state's largest newspaper.

  (For my part, I'm just happy that at least some in the media reporting on this have finally noticed they were previously misreporting on it as a "voter fraud", rather than election fraud, scandal, even though voters are accused of having done nothing wrong here. In fact, they are the ones who appear to have been defrauded in this matter by GOP insiders! Happily, the Washington Post removed three references to "voter fraud" in one of their stories after my complaints last week.)

  All of that, even as Republicans in the state's legislature continue to jam through a polling place Photo ID voting restriction during the lame duck period before they lose their supermajority in the upcoming new session, along with their ability to override a veto from the state's Democratic Governor. The Photo ID measure, which they've been trying to adopt for years, claiming it necessary to prevent "voter fraud", did not, until today, apply to absentee voting --- where actual fraud clearly exists;

• Finally today, speaking of lame ducks, the GOP-gerrymandered and controlled state legislature in Wisconsin worked, literally, all night to jam through a bill aimed at stealing power from incoming Democratic Governor Tony Evers, incoming Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul and from the state's voters who elected Democrats for every statewide office in November. Adopted by party line votes in both chambers as the sun rose today after another all-night session, Republicans hope GOP Gov. Scott Walker will sign the measure before leaving office after the first of the year. Walker, who was rejected by voters last month, has said he planned to do so.

  As we discussed on yesterday's program, the outrageous GOP power grab in WI mirrors a similar coup by the NC legislature in 2016 after a Democrat was elected as Governor in that state. Republican lawmakers in Michigan are also considering similarly desperate measures before Democrats take over as Governor and Sec. of State in that state next month. All in all, the desperate power grabs by GOPers around the country do not suggest a healthy party but, rather, one that may well be revealing its political death throes.

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On today's BradCast: The GOP's utter contempt for democracy and voters is now on full display in several states where things did not go well for the party during the November midterms, and nowhere more so than Wisconsin. [Audio link to show follows below.]

In states where Democratic candidates did well in last month's midterms, leading to a loss of control by Republican lawmakers, there is now a desperate and brazen scramble in lame duck legislative sessions to pass laws in hopes of robbing power from incoming Democrats before they can be seated. In Michigan, for example, where Dems won statewide races for Governor and Secretary of State and voters overwhelmingly adopted ballot initiatives to expand voting rights, GOPers are jamming through last-minute legislation to prevent the Election Day registration that voters had adopted.

In North Carolina, the Republican-controlled state legislature is ramming through a Photo ID restriction law before they lose their Super-Majority to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper's vetoes. That action is particularly hypocritical as the state is in the midst of a massive absentee ballot election fraud scandal, apparently perpetrated by a GOP contractor and former felon hired by Republican Mark Harris in his race against Democrat Dan McCready for the U.S. House seat in the state's 9th district. Republicans claim that Photo ID voting restrictions at the polling place are necessary to prevent fraud --- of which there is little or none by voters --- even while calling for Harris to be certified by the state despite clear evidence of serious absentee ballot fraud on behalf of the Republican candidate. We've got more new details on that ongoing probe today, which has prevented Harris' reported win --- by just 905 votes out of more than 280,000 tallied --- from being certified by the state Board of Elections.

But it is Wisconsin today where the GOP is attempting perhaps the most audacious power grab in the nation this year. As Republican Gov. Scott Walker was voted out in November in favor of Democrat Tony Evers, the GOP is attempting to usurp the powers of the incoming Governor, along with Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, on a litany of issues before they can be sworn in. The new provisions, never mentioned by Republicans during the campaign, were introduced suddenly in a massive 144-page bill unveiled late last Friday night in a special legislative lame duck session called before Walker is finally out.

Despite Democrats having won every statewide contest on the ballot in Wisconsin's 2018 midterms, Republicans were able to retain control of the wildly gerrymandered State Assembly. They received just 45 percent of the vote overall, but will nonetheless control 63 of 99 seats in the Assembly. This week, they are using that ill-gotten legislative muscle to swipe the incoming Governor and AG's powers. They hope to block the Democrats' campaign promises to expand healthcare and ease suppressive voting restrictions (which arguably resulted in enough voter disenfranchisement to narrowly give the state to Donald Trump in 2016). Republicans are also attempting to restrict early voting in 2020 in hopes of avoiding losses similar to those suffered by GOPers in 2018. The unprecedented Republican power grab has led to protests at the state capital in Madison this week of the type not seen since shortly after Walker took power in 2011 and immediately worked with the Republican legislature to strip collective bargaining rights from public union members.

We're joined today by OneWisconsinNow's ANALIESE EICHER --- a plaintiff in the 2016 federal case which struck down the WI GOP's previous attempt to curtail early voting --- to detail the outrageous and unprecedented #WIGOPPowerGrab being strong-armed through the state legislature tonight.

"What we're seeing here is the obliteration of the separation of powers," Eicher tells me. "We know that when Republicans don't like the results, they seek to change the rules and to change how things operate. With Democrats sweeping six statewide elections here in Wisconsin, the only option for the Republicans to maintain what they thought was their really, really great unilateral control of the State of Wisconsin is to make changes."

"We're seeing everything from limiting local governments' abilities to do work on their roads, limiting their abilities to pay a prevailing wage, changing the makeup and composition of boards and commissions in Wisconsin, so that the legislature has equal or more power than the Governor in regards to appointments. We're seeing change's to people's abilities to get healthcare and receive benefits," she says.

"We're seeing changes to the Attorney General's office, as to whether the Attorney General can leave a lawsuit or join a lawsuit," she explains, referring to Kaul's vow to remove WI from the federal lawsuit by several GOP-controlled states challenging the Constitutionality of ObamaCare and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. "This extraordinary session bill severely limits his ability to essentially do what he campaigned on, and what people voted for him to do."

As one Democrat noted during hearings today in Madison, the action being taken by the legislature "will invalidate the results of the will of the people and shows direct contempt for the voters". But, of course, that is the whole idea, since Republicans now clearly hate democracy. Eicher argues Republicans "want to stay in power, no matter what the cost" and suggests "voters are not responding well to what's happening in this extraordinary session." She believes they will pay a price for this in 2020.

Finally today, we're joined by Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report, with a look at the late George H.W. Bush's environmental legacy, Donald Trump's isolation of the U.S. on climate change policy at the recent G20 meeting in Argentina, and a warning for the world issued this week as the annual U.N. climate summit opened this week in Poland...

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